Cyberwarfare / Nation-State Attacks , Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Ransomware
Okta's Marc Rogers on Why Beating Ransomware Is a Team Sport
Rogers Warns Ransomware Intrusions Are Getting More Frequent and Easier to ExecuteIncreased collaboration between the public and private sectors hasn't slowed the increased frequency and ease of ransomware intrusions, but efforts to change the financial incentives of ransomware are having "a pretty good effect," says Marc Rogers, vice president of cybersecurity strategy at Okta.
Ransomware actors are increasingly breaking into organizations and stealing data without even using malware, which makes the attacks more accessible to cybercriminals, Rogers says. But government and industry are trying to change the financial incentives for cybercriminals by making ransomware less profitable and easier to prosecute (see: Battling Ransomware: 'We're Targeting the Entire Ecosystem').
"This is not something the private sector can do alone," Rogers says. "It's something that we need collaboration from federal agencies, from statesmen and from law enforcement. We're now starting to see that it's having a pretty good effect."
In an audio interview with Information Security Media Group, Rogers also discusses:
- How the Russia-Ukraine war has reshaped the ransomware landscape;
- What's allowing ransomware groups to make their attacks simpler;
- The biggest cybersecurity trends to watch at Black Hat USA 2022.
Rogers, who has over 20 years of cybersecurity experience, began hacking in the 1980s and is now a white-hat hacker renowned for penetrating Apple's TouchID and the Tesla Model S. Prior to Okta, Rogers served as head of security at Cloudflare and spent a decade managing security for U.K. telecommunications giant Vodafone. He's been a CISO in South Korea and also co-founded a disruptive Bay Area startup. In the role of technical adviser, he helped create hacks for the TV show "Mr. Robot." He is also an organizer and head of security for DEF CON, the world's largest hacking conference. Most recently, Rogers helped found the CTI League, a multinational cybersecurity initiative combining industry professionals, government agencies and law enforcement from 80 different countries.